


It's like a story of love

by mjonesing (klassmartin)



Series: Music sounds better with you [5]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbours, But a bad Cupid, F/M, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Ned plays Cupid, Not a Soulmate AU despite the hint in the description, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26572360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klassmartin/pseuds/mjonesing
Summary: After meeting their new neighbour, Ned decides that Peter and Michelle would make a perfect match.The only flaw? Ned cannot get them to meet, no matter what he tries.
Relationships: Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Series: Music sounds better with you [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921150
Comments: 25
Kudos: 87
Collections: The Spideychelle Shuffle





	It's like a story of love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jsscshvlr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jsscshvlr/gifts).



> For the Decades Special Edition of the Spotify Shuffle Game.
> 
> Song: Only You by Yazoo
> 
> I have been wanting to write this all week since I read a children's book with a similar premise. I'm so happy this song somehow made a tenuous link and therefore justified my writing it, though it would probably be better if I hadn't written it at midnight.
> 
> Don't let that stop you though. We all need a little more Ned in our lives.

He meets Michelle the day she moves in, lugging boxes up the six flights of stairs it takes to reach their floor. He’s returning from a lunch run and she’s trying to stop the bottom of her hefty box of books from giving way before she’s made it to the propped open door.

“Here,” he says as he drops his takeout bag to help her out. She gives him a breathless, lopsided smile as he grabs the front of the weakening cardboard. “699, but you can call me Ned.”

“697, but you can call me Michelle.” She grunts as the weight shifts as they begin their final ascent. “Actually, you can just call me MJ.”

Ned helps her move the rest of her belongings from the lobby to the apartment, as well as pointing out some of the key food and coffee places within the block. Michelle is nice, if a little shy, and she snorts at his terrible jokes instead of forcing a laugh. They share the cold leftovers of his forgotten takeout and Michelle promises him a tray of her mom’s famous brownies when she gets around to unpacking the boxes marked ‘kitchen’.

Later that night, Ned updates his friend and next-door neighbour on the new resident.

“She seems really cool, man,” Ned concludes into the headset as he kills the last zombie of the level of his video game. “I think you’d like her.”

“I’m sure she’s great,” Peter replies, distracted by the fist rapidly approaching his face. Ned hits pause to turn his attention more fully to the second monitor, watching the brawl for a moment before concluding it’s under control.

Discovering his next door neighbour is the one and only Spiderman was a happy but complete accident - well, happy might be the wrong word, as it involved a delirious and profusely-bleeding vigilante falling through his bedroom window in the early hours of the morning because he’d thought it was his own. 

The friendship between the pair had sparked right away after bumping into each other in the laundry room, and before Ned could even blink, the two graduates were spending most of their free time together between either of their apartments. The discovery of Peter’s actual late-night job only strengthened their bond, until Ned effortlessly became ‘the guy in the chair’, helping out and keeping his friend company until his yawns become more prominent than the words.

“Maybe she can come to game night?” Ned continues, settling back into his gaming chair. “I’m sure she’d like to make some new friends now she’s in the city by herself.”

“You really wanna introduce Flash into the equation before she’s gotten settled?” Peter asks as he webs a knife to the alley wall. “You know people need to be sufficiently warned before they meet him.”

“Honestly, I think she could take him. Maybe even take him out.”

“Oh?” Peter seems so impressed that he almost misses the last ditch-attempt from the man at his feet. “Okay, well yeah - Hey, not cool, dude! - Invite her. You know I’m always down to see someone crushing Flash’s soul.”

The issue Ned failed to remember is that Peter doesn’t make it to game night most weeks, so while Michelle reluctantly agrees and then actually seems to enjoy herself, the whole thing is a bust because of the empty chair his best friend should be occupying.

Still, Michelle seems to get along well with the group, her sarcastic quips only the second best part of the evening because her sharp tongue eviscerates Flash in twenty different ways in the space of two hours. Even Betty - who tends to need an extended period of time to warm to people - nods her approval as Michelle waves goodbye from the door.

He meets her for Sunday afternoon coffee a couple of weeks later and they chat about her interests, her job, her family until the sun begins to set. Ned keeps glancing at his phone, waiting for a response to the last-minute offer for Peter to join them, but he knows it’s a fruitless endeavor - Spidermanning takes it out of a person, and Peter spends so much of the night outside that he’s basically become nocturnal.

The most annoying part of this is that Michelle heads north while Ned heads South back to the apartment block, and just as he’s putting his key in the door, Peter appears from inside of his apartment with sleep rumpled hair and his phone in his hand.

“Guess I’m too late for coffee, huh?” Peter says with a grimace. Ned just groans and rolls his eyes.

In the following weeks, Ned spends an increasing amount of time with Michelle, and comes to one inevitable conclusion; she is, if there’s ever the chance they exist, Peter’s actual soulmate. 

He can just  _ see  _ it; how Peter’s gentle soul would hug around the hard exterior of Michelle’s, their personalities so different yet complementary. There’s something about Michelle that is quietly magical, and it is Ned’s firm belief that Peter would amplify this to show the world just how amazing she is. To let her be vulnerable and open and appreciate every facet of her diamond mind.

And Peter, his borderline-hermit, Atlas of a best friend, needs someone who can show him there’s more to life than stopping crime and watching old movies until he falls asleep. That he deserves someone who can fill his life with all the colours of a rainbow. That he needs someone who can pull him back; who can heal the scars inside of him with her intelligence and her wit.

Except he  _ cannot  _ get them to sync up their schedules. Michelle works long days, trudging home at seven with armfuls of paperwork, only Peter left his apartment ten minutes before. And when  _ he  _ comes home, in the rare instance he doesn’t use the fire exit, he’ll crash through Ned’s door with fresh coffee and a tired smile twenty minutes after he’s greeted Michelle at the mailboxes on her way out.

Once Ned catches himself rushing to the peephole for a scheduled evening check-in, he accepts he has a minor problem, and clearly the only way to solve it is to intervene.

Since he can’t seem to tie them both down for an official meeting, the next obvious choice is to force a situation where they have to converse. So Ned intercepts a parcel for Peter and begs Michelle to hold onto it until he wakes up - only he finds out an hour later that Peter’s out of state on some kind of mission and won’t be back for days, and could Ned pick up his delivery and run it over to his Aunt May? Her tap is broken and needs a new part.

He sneaks down to the laundry room one night and innocently drops one of Peter’s shirts into Michelle’s dryer. He’s sure this one will work, but Michelle knocks on his door instead and humorously says, “There’s only one person dorky enough to wear a shirt like this.”

Ned sighs long and loud. If only she knew of the much bigger dork who lives just a few feet away.

He figures out that Michelle is always early - a perfect match for Peter who is forever late - so he tries to orchestrate plans with either party so they’ll have to leave the apartment at the same time as the other is heading out for something else. He’s thwarted by Peter’s sudden resolution to try harder to be a better friend - meaning he can no longer rely on Peter leaving fifty minutes later than he should.

It’s just rude, is what it is.

To top it all off, Michelle drops completely off the map for several weeks as autumn fades into the winter blues.

Ned is exasperated and almost ready to give up completely. It seems he’ll never be able to get his friends together at this rate.

Peter does not take Ned’s moping lying down. He takes breaks from his patrols so he can check in - sometimes even at respectable hours - and keeps dropping by with various iterations of Ned’s favourite foods. Ned appreciates his best friend taking some of the slack, easing the slight imbalance of their relationship that Ned has never minded, but all he can think of every time he sees Peter’s face is that it would look much happier if it were getting to know Michelle.

By the time the holiday season begins, Ned has decided to move on from his failing Cupid duties entirely. He’s been sufficiently distracted anyway, engaged in a rather rigorous round of flirty banter with Betty, which is the reason he is paying no attention to his surroundings when he walks straight into Peter’s apartment in the early evening hours of a Friday, carrying the latest release of their favourite video game and enough snacks to tide them over for a weekend of intense playing.

“The line at the store was insane but I -”

Ned pauses at the decidedly unmanly yelp that comes from a few feet away. Then he looks up.

“What,” Ned whispers, then, “What?!”

And finally, a very loud,  _ “What?!” _

In front of him, seated on the couch is a very flustered and definitely shirtless Peter, clutching Michelle as she straddles his lap with swollen lips and messy hair.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Peter says immediately and unconvincingly.

Michelle scoffs, crossing her arms over the gaping opening of her shirt. “It’s exactly what it looks like.”

“You…” The bags drops from Ned’s hand as he stares at the sight before him, trying to remember how to breathe. “You guys have met?”

“Yep,” Peter mumbles as Michelle says, “Several times.

“I didn’t want you to find out this way, man,” Peter says imploringly, carefully extracting himself from beneath Michelle to throw his shirt back on and approach his shocked friend. “We didn’t mean to keep it from you, it’s just…”

“You were a little bit obsessed,” Michelle says bluntly, then with a softer voice adds, “We only met a few weeks ago and we wanted to see what this was before we got your hopes up.”

“A few  _ weeks _ ?! This has been going on that long?”

Peter smiles softly, leaning in close. “If it helps at all, I think you were right.”

“I was?”

“Yeah.” Peter glances over his shoulder to take in Michelle’s nervous wringing of her hands, his smile only growing. “She’s more than great, Ned. I think she’s pretty damn perfect.” 

**Author's Note:**

> @mjonesing on Tumblr as always


End file.
